it's not the end of the world

Wednesday, 13 July 2011

Saturday, 22 January 2011

I spent five full hours studying the basics on human anatomy today. The session was led by the delightful Ching Ching who spends time at Body Works. She took as through cells (building blocks of our body) different systems of the body (Skeletal, Musuclar, Circulatory, Lympathic, Immune, Nervous, Endocrine, Integumentary, Respiratory, Disgestive, Urinary, Reproductive). We then followed up with how some of these systems work in unison while at work.

The majority of stuff seemed pretty self explanatory but there was a lot of information. My head hurt at the end of the session.

The coolest thing I learnt which was totally new and awesome was PNF stretching. It a way of tricking one’s mind to relax a bit of muscle. It’s a bit like those mind tricks you play on your body when you were a kid. Remember the one where you lean your body weight on your palm against the wall for a couple of minutes, then you release from the post and your arm will feels as thought it’s moving upwards by itself? It’s kinda like that.

There’s a lot to take in. It should get better as we put the theory into practice.

Today’s session started easy enough. We learnt from Hindi/Sanskrit terms to the different asanas (poses) within the sun salutations we covered in the previous session.

Then we moved onto the learning the Anusara* Invocation. I kinda like it. It blocks out normal life and helps me to focus on the session. The “lyrics” and melody are pretty awesome. It’s hard not to like it.

Om Namah Shivaya Gurave

Saccidananda Murtaye

Nisprapancaya Shantaya

Niralambaya Tejase

Om

That loosely translates to:

I bow to the presence of God within

Our true and highest teacher

That lives in and around us as

Being, consciousness and bliss.

It is ever-present and radiates peace

Lighting the way to transformation.

Om

I can’t seem to find a mp3 of the invocation. But there are loads of variations on Youtube you can look up.

Anyway after that we started doing a what seemed like numerous sun salutations and side way bends - For a whole hour an a half! We all tried really hard focusing on our alignment and breathing. The level of concentration was pretty intense and I was fading a little towards the end.

I need to work on a couple of things. My hamstrings are really tight which is affecting my ability to press my heels down on the ground in a down dog, as well as sitting upright for the forward bends. The other thing is I have a tendency of opening my chest/ribs up all the time. I need to keep it tight and close to the core. It’s kinda hard while doing poses where hands are together above the head. I gotta make a mental note of it.

I think I need to take a few more sessions on the side to get myself conditioned.

Basically I was pretty rubbish today. But I’ll work on it.

*Anusara is another school of yoga. Founded recently by a chap called John Friend. Judging by his company site. I think he’s doing alright.

I had my first class today. And it was interesting. Our instructors Lorraine and John did a bit of house keeping. Then everyone introduced themselves and talked about our individual motivation and expectation from the course. There are quite a few of us in class. A total of 19 people. Made up of predominantly female expats with a couple of Asians and gentlemen thrown in. Glad not to be the only chap in the class. Everyone seemed nice.

Then we did some Asanas (or physical training). The majority of the people looked pretty serious as soon as we got into it. I certainly had my game face on, trying to keep up and take in all of the instructions.

Did you know that there are over a dozen variations of the Sun Salutation? We did a total of four variations last night. Sun Salutation 1 and 2 from the Ashtanga series, as well as the Classic Sun Salutation (or the tippy toes one as I tried to make a mental note of it), and the Dancing Warrior (the fun one).

We must of done like 8 full sets of different sun salutations and I was pretty whacked by the end of it. The room was pretty packed and eventually it got quite sweaty. But I guess John proved his point. Sun Salutations are good for cardio and upper body. Note to self: bring water and a small towel to the next class.

Thursday, 02 July 2009

Wednesday, 01 July 2009

When i was flying from hong kong to london i met a brave mother who was travelling alone with her two kids - one 3 yr old, the other 7 months. I noticed the way she set up her inflight cot. One of the safety straps by the head of the cot was left undone because it retricted her baby's movement, and also it got in the way of her interacting with her child. Needless to say the safety of the baby was comprised but in the eyes of the mother, it was worth it. This is a fine example of a poorly designed piece of furniture. May be between the cot and the table there should have some kind of interlock, may be the table should fold out as a cot. Whatever the solution is, there's gotta be a better way.